AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Penetrate the wall? This is a terrible plan already.”
“Second, become friends. I feel like before, last year, you both went from zero to sixty so fast there wasn’t enough time to build that friendship foundation. If that had been in place, it wouldn’t have been so easy for him to ghost you.”
“Friends.” I laugh. “You do realize you’re pretty much asking for the impossible, right?” Could I even be friends with Clay? It’s worth a shot, but in my gut I know I would always want more.
“And third, once you’re friends again, you remind him how easy it is to love you and how hard it is to live without you.”
“That simple huh. Penetrate the wall, become friends, make him fall in love with me.”
This time she laughs. “I didn’t say it was going to be simple.” She picks up a bottle of sun spray and applies it on her arms, jostling the phone back and forth between her hands.
“What if it doesn’t work?” I shake my head, already feeling the disappointment deep in my stomach from impending failure.
“Well then, you’ll never wonder what if. You’ll have tried.” She says it so matter-of-factly.
I’ll have tried.
I know she’s right. If I want this, I need to make it known. Maybe he felt the same way. Maybe he was wanting me to fight for him and now’s my chance.
“Just the thought of this makes me queasy. I feel like I’m being pushed out of my comfort zone and I haven’t even done anything yet.”
“Love is a risk—it’s scary.”
“You can say that again. So how do I start with step one? I can’t get him to talk to me. I don’t even know where he is.”
She lets out a laugh. “Oh, come on. We all know where Clay is. From what Avery has said, he’s pretty much become a recluse over this past year.”
“The lake.”
“Yep. And aren’t you headed to your parents’ house in a few days for Christmas?” she asks knowingly.
“I am.”
A small smile slips onto her face, and in return, one slowly takes over mine. “Seems like the lake might be a nice place for you to spend New Year’s Eve.”
New Year’s . . . hmm.
“Might be indeed.”
10
CLAY
I’m dead asleep when the buzzing of my cell phone on my nightstand wakes me. Picking it up, I see it’s seven thirty in the morning, there are two missed calls and three texts from Ash, and it’s also still mostly dark outside. A streak of panic washes through me as I immediately hit his name to call him back versus checking the messages.
“Hey, did you see my texts?” he asks.
“No, just that you called. What’s up?”
Moose lifts his head and gives me an evil glare. This dog loves his sleep, and he cracks me up.
“We need a favor,” he tells me as I rub the sleep from my eyes.
A favor, okay, that’s better than the dark places my mind immediately went to, and now I’m wondering if I should have checked the messages first.
“You needed to scare the shit out of me this early in the morning?” I ask.
He chuckles. “Well . . .”
